November 7, 2016

Cause and Effect

I think this is one of
the most difficult concepts to teach first graders. It’s even more difficult when they need to
come up with the effect. We made our way
through the first introduction of cause and effect and didn’t do too bad. There were lots of activities to help master
the skill. As always, we started with
some read-alouds and exercised our Metacognition by making a Reading Salad (will post about making a Reading Salad soon).

Literature we used during the unit

I made sure to ask lots of ‘why’
and ‘what’ questions during the process.

It
also helps to have an anchor chart that remains up throughout the lesson. Thanks to The Learning Toolbox for this
one.

My class loves all of
the Pete the Cat books. So, it was only
fitting that we include one in this unit.
We used Pete the Cat and his White Shoes. I gave them a sheet of blue construction
paper and I saw the most creative cats I’ve ever seen in my life!!

I used an idea from Teaching With a Mountain View blog and created a Cause and Effect chain. I used very simple statements that my class
could read on their own. It’s a Freebie
on my TPT site

Click Clack Moo makes my students laugh every year I read it! It's a cute story!! The students needed help reading the causes
and effects so I had them work in groups with two average-high reading
students. We went through the sentences
together before they worked in their groups.

I
was also able to differentiate the lesson thanks to Mrs. Patmore and her